Despite huge public opposition, and evidence of real harm being caused, the government’s reckless and chaotic immigration policy continues apace, with thousands more migrants arriving into the country in the first two months of 2024, and almost 28,000 persons now being accommodated in asylum centres.
As the world and its mother now knows, most of those who have arrived in Ireland seeking ‘asylum’ are coming from countries that are not war-torn, such as Georgia and Nigeria. An additional 105,000 Ukrainians have also been granted temporary protection here.
The intolerable strain this has placed on our housing and healthcare can be seen, not only in the number of people sleeping rough outside the International protection Office, but in the increased difficulties Irish people are facing accessing services which were already badly stretched – especially in rural areas.
In the teeth of growing public upset and opposition – with polls showing huge majorities believing we have taken too many asylum claimants, and that immigration is now the top issue of concern for voters – Taoiseach Leo Varadkar recently said in relation to protests that:
“Ireland is a republic, we’re a democracy and we’re a free country and in a republic and a democracy and a free country people have a right to protest and they have a right to hold views that other people may find objectionable.”
Fine words. But in reality, the state – and those accommodation providers who are making an absolute fortune out of the migrant crisis – have no intention of allowing Irish people to protest if that gets in the way of their deeply unpopular policies and strategies.
In January, the riot squad was sent down to Roscrea to bully through an asylum centre in the town’s only hotel, despite the strong opposition of the locals and serious upset in the town
(The reaction from much of the Dublin media was as expected: ‘look at the awful country hicks wanting a hotel for their Communions celebratons when people are fleeing war’, they sneered, secretly thankful their own postcode had spared them the imposition of any such diversity.)
Before Roscrea, vanloads of Gardaí were sent in the night to smash up a protest being manned by mostly women in Santry who were concerned – as they have every right to be – about hundreds of strange men being brought into their area.
As we reported at the time, 30 Gardaí came in hard and fast after 1am in the night, bulldozing people aside, and smashing up the gazebos and other paraphernalia where people had gathered to block the entrance into a commercial site where 300 migrants were to be housed.
“This is desperate, what you are doing to us,” one upset and crying woman was heard saying. “Do you know what you are doing to this community, do you know what you are doing to us.”
“There are people just in tears here in morning, a lot of older people, a lot of pensioners,” one of the women told me. “The Gardai just came in and turned us over. We are just distraught over this. ”
“They came tearing into where we were and about 30 Gardaí jumped out of vans. One of them came running by me saying “It’s on. Go, go, go.” And then they went to the car park gate and started breaking up the gazebo and throwing our things around.”
The actions of the Gardaí in Santry, Roscrea, Coolock and elsewhere – actions likely undertaken at the direction of the authorities – were almost certainly designed to send a message.
People have a right to protest – but only until the state decides they must be stopped. And it’s extraordinary, isn’t it, that the bullhorn brigade on the left, and in Sinn Féin, have been either suspiciously silent or enthusiastically supportive of attempts to crush ordinary people.
But we’re now seeing, at a time when every county in Ireland now seems to have a rolling local protest against immigration, that strong arm tactics are, and will, be backed up by legal measures taken by companies who are getting fat on the billions being poured into asylum accommodation.
The amount of money being made by a select numbers of companies from the asylum mess is simply staggering. Hundreds of millions are being handed over from taxpayers’ funds – with companies owned by the McEnaney family raking in more than €130m by the State to house asylum seekers and refugees since 2020, for example.
As Matt Treacy wrote on this platform previously, with these kind of incentives, hoteliers are obviously eager to swap tourists for asylum seekers, and to hell with the collapse in the usual multiple effects of tourist beds, especially when the accommodation provider is actually owned by an investment fund for whom Ireland is just another cog in a giant globalist wheel.
Little wonder then that companies will use the all legal heft that money can buy to ensure protesters – local people – are removed from becoming an obstacle from a plan that will earn millions for parties that don’t live in the area and aren’t too bothered about the effect on communities.
Yesterday, a company called Pastures New Accommodation, had its lawyers obtain an injunction to stop protesters interfering with their construction of asylum facilities at Newhall, Naas, Co Kildare for almost a thousand people.
It claims its work is being hampered by those opposed to the State’s provision of accommodation to displaced persons who are mounting a 24-hour “blockade” of the site’s main entrances, the Independent reported.
These alleged activities amount to a nuisance and an unreasonable interference with the company’s work, it claims.
Naturally, since the protesters weren’t there to argue their case, Pastures New were granted a temporary injunction – and given that the protesters don’t have the cash to hire expensive lawyers, and that the government supports this build, and that the law generally doesn’t allow construction work to be impeded, its almost certain the company will also be granted a permanent injunction.
Then the supposed democratic right to protest will, yet again, come up hard against the burly arm of the law. The protesters, even if their protest is peaceful and silent, even if they feel they have the support of the public in regard to their concerns, will be arrested and held in contempt of court if they continue to block the site.
The Newhall case encapsulates much of why the claim that we live in a parliamentary democracy where the view of the majority of the people decides policy and law and the direction of the nation can often seem like a pretence.
Elections are held every 5 years. In between, the government and opposition are entrusted with the authority that has been given to them by the voters to reflect the wishes of the electorate.
But what happens when the policies of the government – and most of the Opposition – are clashing with the wishes of a clear and substantial majority of the people?
How is democracy being represented when the authorities, with all the heavy-handed force it can muster, is forcing the Irish people to accept the folly of a policy that decided that this country could accept 200,000 Ukrainians and also throw open its doors to “asylum seekers” the world over, with promises of lots of free services and free housing within 4 months?
Where was this presented as policy by any political party in the last election? And by presented I don’t mean a paragraph buried in a party manifesto where it’s hoped it will be missed by low-information voters?
When did we have an open debate on the migration policy now been rolled out by the government under the cover of the democratic process? When did we as a people sign up to this madness? That never happened.
And how is democracy operating when it has become the norm that when ordinary people speak up, they are shouted down and demonised and described as ‘racists’ by taxpayer-funded NGOs and politicians and media commentators who know damn well that the women in Roscrea who say they don’t feel safe anymore aren’t ‘far-right’, but expressing genuine and legitimate concerns.
(I believe this is called punching down: when the powerful and well-funded and well-connected attack ordinary people, or people who they know can’t punch back in the same way. It’s a special skill honed by virtue-signalling progressives and those on the left who have long ago abandoned the needs and concerns of ordinary people.)
The government can be voted out in the next election – and maybe be replaced by the equally hapless Sinn Féin who want a multi-cultural Ireland and are equally likely to ignore what the people who actually live here want. But by then huge damage will have been done.
Polls showed that some twelve months ago people thought Ireland had taken in too many refugees – but the numbers being accommodated have surged again since then. What will the asylum numbers have soared to by the time the next election comes around? And then we will likely be told that an amnesty is needed for those who have already come here and, most likely, also told that we need to accept more climate refugees or some such nonsense.
No wonder people feel unrepresented, and angry, and also feel that Irish people and their concerns and needs matter least to this government and to most of the TDs in the Dáil. Our own young people are being forced to emigrate because of the cost of living and housing crisis, while our government is building modular homes for the rest of the world.
Pasture New has already received millions of euro from the state for its provision of asylum accommodation, which appears to likely be in relation to its operations in Stradbally, Co Laois, where 950 Ukrainians are being housed.
The company was “also at the centre of plans to house 950 Ukrainians in the small village of Annamoe in Wicklow last year, however these plans were withdrawn after significant opposition from locals and owners of Glendalough Estate where the accommodation was to be erected”.
Now it wants to build an asylum centre for almost 1,000 people in Kildare. No-one asked the locals if they were happy with this, or if they had concerns, despite all the hot air about consultation and involving communities.
And the very natural desire to help those feeing Ukraine also leave people in Kildare and elsewhere with the obvious questions: What happens when the bulk of the Ukrainians return to their own homes?
Will these huge centres hosting up to 1,000 people then become IPAS centres housing migrants – many who arrive without passports or identifying papers? And will locals simply be expected to put up with this?
Ennistymon in Co Clare has a population of 1,137 according to the last census. It currently also hosts 2,252 Ukrainian refugees.
Similar patterns are seen elsewhere. such as the government’s wish to cram up to 100 asylum claimants into the small village of Coole in Westmeath.
Those protesting in Kildare say 1,000 people is a huge number to land in any community – and perhaps it is unsurprising, given that villages and towns are being forced to accept throngs of strangers in their midst, that some protesters have said the government’s policy increasingly feels like a “plantation”.
They’ve been excoriated by those with powerful platforms for doing so, especially given the historical connotations of that term, and the terrible consequences for Ireland and her people of the plantations that took place more than 400 years ago.
But as the long arm of the law joins with the full machinations of the state in bulldozing Irish people aside to ensure more asylum centres are imposed on our towns and spaces, I suspect increasing numbers of people agree that no one is to blame for the growing public anger except the government themselves.